Teenage Potter enthusiast wins contest to interview author

A media coup, the only British television interview with JK Rowling on the launch of the sixth Harry Potter book, has gone to a completely inexperienced interviewer. On the other hand, Owen Jones quite possibly knows more about her boy wizard and his world than she can remember herself.

Owen, 14, who is from Cardiff, won a competition broadcast last night, Harry Potter at the Castle - the Quest for the Ultimate Harry Potter Fan.

The prize was conducting an interview with Rowling at the launch this Friday night at Edinburgh castle. Millions of child readers and booksellers have been counting down the minutes to the midnight launch of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

The Edinburgh event will be shadowed by thousands of bookshops throughout Britain, which have already taken advance orders worth millions. The book is confidently predicted to sell more than 2m copies in Britain and 10m worldwide - on the first day.

Owen beat three other contestants who like him spent months rereading every word of the first five books - 265m copies sold to date in 200 countries worldwide, translated into 62 languages - and scouring the internet for Harry Potter arcana. "I was nervous when I realised just how good all the other contestants were," he said. "Some of the questions were really hard. I feel ecstatic to have won. It's brilliant."

The question he most wants to ask is the one which will leave him and millions of other readers feeling orphaned and bereft, and booksellers the world over in tears.

"I would like to ask JK Rowling what's going to happen in the next books and how does she feel about the moment when she will finally finish the series and not write Harry Potter books any more."

The launch ceremony, featuring Rowling, the world's first billionaire author, reading from the new book, will be broadcast on ITV1 from 23.45 on Friday night. Owen's interview with her can be seen on Sunday afternoon.